grollen
banner
gnot.bsky.social
grollen
@gnot.bsky.social
currently reinventing multiple wheels

urban cyclist

poetry, photography, politics & philosophy

cooking & gardening

Cultural Anthropologist

power is always productive.
who is it benefiting? how?
Reposted by grollen
Read this sentence slowly:

“Gov. Gavin Newsom, crypto executives and business leaders are ramping up efforts this week to stop the proposed wealth tax...”

gift link:

www.nytimes.com/2026/02/17/u...
As Bernie Sanders Comes to California, Wealth Tax Opponents Intensify Efforts
www.nytimes.com
February 17, 2026 at 10:56 PM
Reposted by grollen
Mr. Sim lived in the US for 43 years. He was ordered deported 20 years ago after a larceny conviction. Because Cambodia wasn’t accepting deportations, he was allowed to stay on an order of supervision.

After 20 years, he was suddenly arrested at an ICE check-in and sent to detention, where he died.
February 18, 2026 at 1:47 AM
Reposted by grollen
ICE announced they’re going to spend more than $38 billion to detain thousands of more people.

With that amount of money, we could end homelessness, extend the Affordable Care Act subsidies, or provide school lunches to every kid in America.

This is totally unacceptable.
February 18, 2026 at 12:16 AM
one problem i see with calling them “concentration camps” is that it stands to potentially obfuscate the ways that the current abuses absolutely reflect the status quo operations of the US carceral industrial complex

like pre-trial detention
February 18, 2026 at 12:17 AM
Reposted by grollen
The concentration camps will not only be for immigrants, documented or otherwise. They already aren't.

They won't only be for brown and Black people.

The targets will keep expanding. It will not end.

The only way it will is if we stop it. Both in and out of the system. There is no other way.
February 17, 2026 at 10:49 PM
Reposted by grollen
People talk about this stuff in terms of how much it'll suck for gaming and I hate to inform you how many MRI machines, X-Rays, all sorts of other vital machinery are just a Windows IoT Edition PC in a beige plastic box with a big magnet/accelerator/whatever attached.
February 17, 2026 at 9:12 PM
Reposted by grollen
I can’t help thinking there’s so much money changing hands wrt ICE detention that there aren’t even enough investigative reporters to track

www.michiganpublic.org/criminal-jus...
Michigan ICE detention center owner reports $254 million profit, record new business in 2025
The company that owns Michigan’s North Lake Processing Center, the largest immigration detention facility in the Midwest, reported $254 million in profit last year, up nearly 700 percent from $32 mill...
www.michiganpublic.org
February 17, 2026 at 7:08 PM
Reposted by grollen
Another thing to add to the Dem platform: all of these contracts were plainly procured through fraud, not one of them will be honored, and all culpable parties will be prosecuted.

This isn't a "radical" demand, it's the bare minimum required to re-establish the rule of law.
The current person in charge of ICE's procurement for detention is a GEO Group executive who ran the company's immigration detention portfolio. He was granted an "ethics waiver" from DHS allowing him to hand out contracts to GEO in his new role.
February 17, 2026 at 11:01 PM
Reposted by grollen
WD and Seagate confirm: Hard drives for 2026 sold out
WD and Seagate confirm: Hard drives for 2026 sold out
Hyperscalers are tearing hard drives out of the hands of manufacturers. Prices are therefore also rising for SSDs.
www.heise.de
February 17, 2026 at 1:16 PM
Reposted by grollen
imho, if there are trials after this, it has to be framed around the formation of a "prerogative state" that made legality a crime. the ones responsible for that enormity are surely violating not only certain laws but their entire mandate as governing officials.
February 17, 2026 at 8:33 PM
Reposted by grollen
The horror stories rolling in from Minnesota are just the tip of the iceberg. This 20-year-old, who's lawfully present in the country, was arrested for being Latino, then jailed in a filthy cell where he couldn't even sit down. 18 days of illegal detention. democracyforward.org/wp-content/u...
February 17, 2026 at 8:06 PM
Reposted by grollen
“I don’t want to be in this place I want to go to my school.”

- 7 year old imprisoned by ICE for 70 days in a concentration camp in Texas.

Today, after @propublica.org published this story, the camp was raided to confiscate letters from the children.

www.propublica.org/article/ice-...
February 17, 2026 at 7:31 PM
Reposted by grollen
it's amazing that we're going to destroy industries that produce products people actually want and use to build out the infrastructure for a generator of bad first drafts
“.. ‘many system vendors will go bankrupt or exit product lines due to a lack of memory. Mobile phone production will be reduced by 200-250 million units, and PC and TV production will be significantly reduced.’ Yikes.”

@pcgamer.com #DRAM
www.pcgamer.com/hardware/mem...
February 17, 2026 at 8:49 PM
Reposted by grollen
The EU's climate targets are completely off track to contain global heating to 1.5°C

Every fraction of a degree the world heats, more people will die, lose their homes, lose their livelihoods

That means every fraction of a degree of heating we STOP, the more people we save and destruction we avoid
🌡️ For the third year in a row, every day in 2025 was more than 1°C warmer than the 1850–1900 pre-industrial level. Over a third of days were above 1.5°C.

⬇️
February 17, 2026 at 11:23 AM
Reposted by grollen
Cycling and children’s mental health www.bikeability.org.uk/blogs/cyclin... We explore the positive impact of cycling for mental health, in honour of Children’s Mental Health Week.
Cycling and children's mental health
We explore the positive impact of cycling for mental health, in honour of Children’s Mental Health Week.
www.bikeability.org.uk
February 17, 2026 at 9:36 AM
Reposted by grollen
So far it looks like Trump, Noem, and operation metro surge drained Minneapolis alone—not yet counting St. Paul, Bloomington, etc.— $203 million. This was a MAGA Trump assault on an American blue city. Nothing more. Start seeing it.

www.fox9.com/news/operati...
Operation Metro Surge cost Minneapolis at least $203 million, city officials say
Minneapolis officials have released an estimated tab on what Operation Metro Surge has cost city residents so far.
www.fox9.com
February 17, 2026 at 1:21 AM
Reposted by grollen
Sex work is work.

Solidarity to these workers as they unionize. And kudos to my @wbng.org parent union, @cwaunion.bsky.social, for supporting the organizing.

www.cbsnews.com/news/sex-wor...
Sex workers in Nevada fighting to become first in U.S. to unionize
Nevada is the only state where people can legally purchase sex, and now sex workers at one of the state's oldest brothels, Sheri's Ranch, are fighting to become the first in the U.S. to unionize.
www.cbsnews.com
February 17, 2026 at 4:46 AM
Reposted by grollen
BREAKING: Rev. Jesse Jackson, civil rights icon and two-time presidential candidate, dies at 84.
Rev. Jesse Jackson, civil rights icon and two-time presidential candidate, dies at 84
“Our father was a servant leader — not only to our family, but to the oppressed, the voiceless, and the overlooked around the world,” the Jackson family said in a statement Tuesday.
nbcnews.to
February 17, 2026 at 9:36 AM
Reposted by grollen
“They are not going to want to make it any harder for ICE to do its job by creating new rights for deportable aliens and new red tape before they can take action against someone.”

NEW RIGHTS

NEW RED TAPE

I don't know how many other ways to say it's the literal constitution
February 17, 2026 at 5:04 AM
Reposted by grollen
"[the 4th Amendment] is dead on arrival," according to three sources close to the administration and a GOP strategist

www.politico.com/news/2026/02...
‘Complete nonstarter’: Administration allies say judicial warrants a red line for White House in DHS funding talks as shutdown looms
The seeming stalemate sets up a clash between the Trump administration and Democrats ahead of a Friday night deadline.
www.politico.com
February 17, 2026 at 4:19 AM
Reposted by grollen
‘His life is in danger,’ U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro said about newborn Juan Nicolás. The child fell ill after spending almost a month — or half his life — in a San Antonio-area family detention facility.
Two-month-old baby 'choking on his own vomit' while detained in Dilley
'His life is in danger,' U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro said about newborn Juan Nicolás. The child fell ill after spending almost a month — or half his life — in a San Antonio-area family detention facility...
www.sacurrent.com
February 16, 2026 at 9:29 PM
Reposted by grollen
...BUT the company intends to ship the ore abroad to be processed and sold. Tell your senators to vote NO! You can call [+1 (202) 224-3121]. Or @earthjustice.org makes it fast/easy to send a personalized letter (and they email it for you): earthjustice.org/action/defen.... 🌎 Thank you!
Stop Congress from selling out the Boundary Waters to a Chilean-owned mine
Corporate polluters are taking aim at one of North America’s most treasured landscapes.
earthjustice.org
February 16, 2026 at 10:36 PM
Reposted by grollen
Local communities are courageously taking on ICE to fight detention warehouses from entering their towns and winning! People are uniting together, uplifting their shared values to welcome people & keep everyone safe, calling on businesses to take a stand, & demanding ICE out of their communities.
ICE wanted this Kansas City warehouse. The people resisted and won.
"This decision wouldn’t have happened without several weeks of protest and collective action by low-wage workers,” one organizer said.
www.motherjones.com
February 12, 2026 at 10:26 PM
Reposted by grollen
So much of the rise of fascism is just normalizing brutality that once felt unthinkable to us because things currently feel a little better than they did at their worst.
February 16, 2026 at 10:56 PM
Reposted by grollen
My theory of the moment: The extraordinary courage of ordinary people in places like Minneapolis is reawakening us to our social and economic ties to immigrants. It's making "love thy neighbor" cool again. That's the ultimate antidote to MAGA hate.

Thoughts on this:

newrepublic.com/article/2059...
February 16, 2026 at 1:21 PM